


Heavy Is The Head That Wears The Crown

by orphan_account



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Genetic Engineering, Genetically Engineered Beings, Graphic Description, Life or Death Situations, M/M, Nuclear Winter, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Nuclear War, Psychological Torture, Torture, Violence, almost forgot those few important tags, demigods are discovered, demigods are gods, humans destroy the world and try to fix it by creating their own gods to do it, is going to be mentioned at some point, no is entirely good or evil, of violence, possible, sort of, there will be ocs but theyll have minor roles mostly, this is going to be dark, will add characters as they appear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-06-18
Packaged: 2018-04-05 00:04:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4158045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Percy Jackson is born into a world destroyed by a nuclear war and is told that he is going to save it. When he's forced to leave home and fend for himself in a world hostile to anything human or god or face death at the hands of those who made him he finds that he's not the only one living on the surface. </p><p>He joins up with others like him, beings built to be better gods, and becomes one of the keys to fixing their future. The gods they were created from have disappeared and as their successors they have to find the solution before the kingdoms of the gods are set to collide with and swallow the human world without anyone to control them. </p><p>However, no one is sure they can accomplish it if they have to give up the one thing that is the most precious to them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heavy Is The Head That Wears The Crown

 

 

_“This night ain't for the holy man with the holy plan_

_For the promise land_

_This night we got the evil hand_

_And the evil hand gonna raise the dead”_

 

* * *

 

It had often been said by many scholars and wise men that humanity would bring their own downfall. It would come in the form of revenge, the wronged seeking vengeance for everything mankind had done to them, or it would come by fire because humans could not control their pride. However it was spoken didn’t matter because the way it happened didn’t make why any different from what those wise men and women once thought.

Humans had brought the world down on top of themselves.

A hard it fall it had been too, going from the top of the world, top of the food chain, down to the very bottom where things from legends and stories that parents told their children at night would hunt them and eat them alive.

Mankind had been surviving, trying to better itself and everyone by the kindness of a few who wanted to help billions. Humans had only just been surviving though, and most not even achieving that. Powerful countries who held the money and the means and methods to keep themselves while others struggled and drowned in death and famine didn’t offer help to anyone but themselves. They did their best to pretend that the world around them wasn’t crumbled under the strain humans had put on it. The Earth was overpopulated with too many people, it could not support twelve billion people and their greedy hands and desperate scrambling consuming much more than the ground beneath their feet and the oceans spread in front of them could produce for them.

Doom had lingered on the fringes of those who were surviving better than others, a heavy cloud that hung on the edge of the consciousness and dogged thoughts with persistent steps. Although humans tried to pretend that the world wasn’t going to end if they didn’t do something (do nothing, there was nothing they could do, they’d dug their own graves) it aggravated a delicate situation.

Those left to fend for themselves, abandoned by their government and each other in a world that was every man for himself, decided to take the fate of their prevalent race in their own battle worn, blood stained hands as they wore misery and despair on their faces. A group of a few smart humans had found the one thing on Earth that would end the starvation, that would kill off friends and family and enemies and make the world an empty place for the strongest to survive. And with a push of a button, projectiles flew thousands of miles and plunged the world into death, destruction, and poison that ate at everything and was unstoppable.

Sally Jackson, like many who lived to see the world three-quarters of a century later, had a kind of detached sympathy for those people of the past. Thes ones who thought they could recreate the world by resetting it and only succeeded in driving mankind underground to try to survive and live through a nuclear winter that would leave the planet barren and life barely clinging on. She felt sad that an alternative hadn’t been found to such a tragic end that she and her child had to endure the consequences of.

But also like many like her she had hope for the future. The leaders of the compound she was had been born and grew up in and world never leave had gathered the most intelligent among their group of maybe one thousand to try to find a way to save themselves. That was how they’d discovered the children of gods. Through collecting the genes of everyone living at the compound they’d come across something outstanding, those with genetics different from humans; kin of some the most powerful beings known to history. Years before Sally had been born humans had learned through trial and error (and so many young, brilliant lives lost) that those with the genetics of the gods were resistant to nuclear radiation.

So people asked themselves: _How can we use this to our advantage?_ It was simple for them to come to the conclusion that they would simple have to create beings that were more god than human, as close to the gods as they could make them. Had this been hundreds of years sooner Sally Jackson and many others would’ve balked, screamed their heads off that human experimentation was wrong, and condemned those who tried to play with life like that.

This was not hundreds of years ago when the world was peaceful and humans were so innovative that they’d built an elevator straight to space, this was a world where if anyone wanted to live to see the next day they’d have to do whatever it would take, trample on anyone they could, to stay afloat.

When the smartest of them had gathered the DNA of the gods to start the project they asked all women who could still bear children in the complex if they would carry the synthesized embryos to term and give birth to the future of their race. Sally hadn’t hear not one single women say no. Any female that was capable of giving birth was going to do so, be useful and ensure that they would be the ones to give life to their saviors of them all. The leaders, most capable of them, the ones ready to do what it took to see the future, did a headcount of all the women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five (a safe range to start with, those that should be the healthiest based on age) and begin with those in the middle.

They started small with the DNA of minor gods like Nike and Andhrímnir and Mafdet because they could afford to use up their DNA in the trial runs. The scientists didn’t have had an infinite supply of the genetics of the gods to work with and so they saved the most important for when they were sure that the children coming from the combination of genetics would live and survive.

At the start of the project the scientists struggled to find a grip on success as fetus after fetus died, taking their host mother with them more often than not, and precious opportunities and lives were fading fast to failure. But not a single soul was ready to throw in the towel and give up and it was one single woman, smarter than the rest and ready to put her life on the line for her theory. ( _Risking my life,_ she had said, _I’m foolish to you for even thinking about it? I’m betting everything that my hypothesis is the best route, which is more than you can say._ )

It was revolutionary to the small pocket of humans whose hopes were waning with every failure. Her gamble, the ultimate risk of material and chances and lives, bore her a daughter of the mighty Zeus and the Thunderbird. A daughter of more than one gods, a female with less than ten percent human DNA. They named her Thalia after one of the nine muses and they had high hopes for her. She had opened the floodgates for more powerful children like her just with her mere existence, children with mixed DNA to stabilize their genetics that were not naturally created.

Nearly a year after Thalia, four more children are born. Not as powerful as she is, children of minor gods and those who are not viewed as just as useful as say a child of Poseidon or his brothers. Three more months after the last birth and Sally Jackson found herself chosen to bear one of these children, “godlings” they called them although they were in no way inferior nor were there powers restrained to the local area. They gave her an important child, told her that he was going to change the world for them, that he would be the one that saved them. He was the son of the Greek God of the Sea and the Northern Winds.

Sally was told that her son would be special, he would cleanse the waters and heal the land for them. She believed them.

 

* * *

  


The hard plastic of the chair beneath her squeaks with every movement she makes, her brown curls falling over her shoulder as she leans back to stare at the clock. Sally was almost due, her abdomen heavy with hopes and dreams and expectations that weighed on her shoulders just as much as they would weigh on her son. He wanted him to have a good, stress free life despite his parentage, as he was the only good thing in her life.

Shortly after the embryo took to her body she’d been assigned a caretaker, a man by the name of Gabe Ugliano, who would care for her and her unborn son after he would come into the world. His function in a world where anyone who didn’t have a job was a waste of space was to provide for her and see to her safety. He was trained to provide her emergency medical care, prenatal care, and so things for her that she was prohibited from doing see as she was carrying precious cargo.

Her hopes of the man being nice, of having a mutual friendship with the person who would see to her and her son’s needs until her son was old enough to start leaving the compound on missions, were dashed when she first met him. He was an ugly man, overweight in a way that no one in this compound should be with how the their meager supplies were rationed out until the child of the goddess and gods of harvest and food was old enough to start providing for them. However, she didn’t judge him at first glance. It didn’t matter to human if you were pretty or ugly anymore so long as you could do your job and do it well. Aesthetics didn’t mend someone’s wounds, defend their home, or build structures. So she didn’t judge.   
  
She wished she would have.

For the first thirty seconds they knew each other he was nice, courteous even, and Sally’s first impression was that he didn’t deserve a look that didn’t befit what was inside. However they were in the eyes of the public, surrounded by doctors and scientists and leaders as they met and exchanged names and pleasantries. As soon as the two of them were behind closed doors he moves into her like a predator stalking his prey. She shouldn’t have been fooled. There was no kindness in that man and it was no longer a tragedy he was so ugly because the outside matched the inside.

(Despite her fear for him, he hadn’t dared to lay a hand on her yet. He may treat her like less than dirt under his feet but he wasn’t stupid enough to jeopardize her or her unborn child. He liked the idea of having someone who could continue their survival as much as the next person.)

Sally leans forward in her chair, listening as the creaking breaks through the stifled murmurs of quiet conversation between three women in early pregnancy, not having yet experienced the pain of carrying the fate of others with them. Her blue-green-blue-again eyes changing colors as dips her head down to put it in her hands and blocking the light from her face. Her temples throb as she feels a headache starting up. The lights were too bright and the air to sterile for comfort as the scent of medicine and and bitter regrets from the few wounded is the only thing she can smell.

She almost misses it when someone sits beside her. The only indication she has company is when a voice breaks through her thoughts to shake her back to the present.

“The one thing they don’t tell you before you agree to having a child is how hard the pregnancy will be.” Sally turns his head in her heads to look at the women as she sighs, an expression of annoyance on her face, “First morning sickness, then back pains and ankle pains, then my caretaker telling me ‘don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t lift your arms above your head!’” She says,doing what Sally assumes is an impression of her caretaker.

The brunette doesn’t say anything to the women sitting next to her, instead eyeing her with weariness. She looks maybe a few years younger than Sally, her face unmarked by stress and instead it contains a youthful optimism. Her hair is dark, almost black, and her eyes are a stormy gray; the kind of gray that makes one think of the place between the good and evil, the middle moral ground that everyone eventually visits at some point in their life.

Sally shifts her gaze down, not sure what to say to this women. Exhaustion was set in her bones and the endurance of her body was being tested by bearing a child that couldn’t be considered human. A human woman’s body was designed to carry a baby, but it was not designed to deal with anything more. A dark truth that killed most mothers with godlings during childbirth because their bodies couldn’t take the strain of giving birth their children. Sally tried not to think about it often because she didn’t know if she would live through it but she had hopes that she would. The doctors told her that she was doing better than the majority of the women apart of the project.

The dark haired women takes Sally’s silence as a sign to continue. “Of course Frederick is also my husband and that tends to make him more protective of me than caregivers are expected to be.” A hand settles on her slightly swollen stomach, her left hand where a tarnished metal band sat on her ring finger. It wasn’t gold like it would’ve been had this exchange taken place in a world far gone from reach, but probably aluminum. Gold was more valuable than lives in this time, and every last bit of it was used for machinery and the wireless communications that were being developed for anyone stepping foot outside of the compound on missions in the future.

“He wants the best for our daughter. For our Annabeth, who will be the smartest godling to ever exist.” That kind of expectation seems a little high for an unborn child but Sally holds her tongue because she didn’t have room to talk. The members of the compound had her expecting her son to save the world. “A daughter of Athena primarily. Everyone is telling me how smart she will be, oh she will be brilliant!”

The excitement in this woman’s eyes is so obvious that Sally is jealous for a split second. She use to be that excited once before and that excitement was lost because of how everything was wearing on her.

“Of course I’ll still love her even if she isn’t absolutely brilliant.”

Curiosity pulls Sally into the previously one-sided conversation, “Do you think it’s possible?”

The women looks at her with bright gray eyes, light up with happiness and love and it invigors Sally a little just because she’s witnessing it on her face. “Do you think our children will be able to save the world? To save themselves even if they can’t save us?”

Her gaze turns thoughtful for a moment and Sally waits for her answer. This isn’t a question that can be easily answered. There were so many lives riding on these children that it seemed almost unfair because they weren’t even born yet.

Sally turns her attention away from the women next to her as another one enters the waiting room. She has long dark hair and an olive skin complexion and European features. She speaks to the young man behind the desk looking bored like he could stare at a plant growing for hours and find it more entertaining than his jobs. He notices her thought when she approaches him, and Sally imagines that it’s not hard since the woman is absolutely beautiful and when she speaks to him it’s with a slight accent, which is surprising. She’s never heard another accent other than the one like her own although she’s hasn’t met every person living in the compound with her.

The woman next to her takes so long to answer her question that Sally forgets she’s even there, finding temporary intrigue with the woman who must be here trying to become a part of the project.

“I think that we are hoping for too much when they are just children. They should be able to live like normal children do before any expectations fall on their shoulders. They may not be truly human but they are still children nonetheless.” The brunette blinks at her companion, not having expected such wise words from her, and she lost for words for a moment.

Before she can find what to say thought a man dressed in white comes out, an unreliable looking clipboard in his hand and wearing a mask of professionalism despite not being a professional doctor by previous human standards. He clears his throat and speaks with a smooth voice, devoid of emotions. “Miss Sally Jackson.”  
  
Sally stands up slowly, back protesting at the movement as she shuffles towards the doctor. It’s moments later after she walks through a door and down a hallway that she realizes she forgot to ask the woman for her name.

 

* * *

  


A month later Percy Jackson is born, named after a hero because a hero he will be even if he’s only a savior to himself, and Sally Jackson finds the light in her life in the form a young baby god who has the most beautiful green eyes, the color of sea foam, and smiles at her like he has the intelligence to know exactly who she is to him. He is her light because she will never be able to have another child and she counts her blessing that Percy was born despite how close they’d both come to death.

Months later when a women with dark hair and gray eyes goes in to give birth to a baby girl, only her daughter Annabeth comes out of the medical center alive. Sally counts her blessings once more because she is aware that could’ve been her lying on a table in the morgue, having bleed out and died from trauma from the birth of a god.

Sally goes to her funeral despite not having ever known her name, and stares at her body as it’s slowly lowered into a shallow container of acid. Her funeral isn’t even a funeral in Sally’s eyes. People stand around her body with varying expressions: mock sadness, indifference, and true sorrow. She doesn’t know what it is about this moment but Sally has to look away from the woman’s corpse, ashamed that she can’t stand the sight of death right then.

Somewhere to her right she can hear quiet sobbing, see a man holding a baby with blonde hair and wide open gray eyes the color of storms and all she can do is stare. She knows the color of those eyes, the person they belong to is slowly dissolving into nothingness right in front of her.

_Frederick,_ her mind whispers, _this was her husband._

She feels sorry for him, sympathetic to his loss but she has no right to try to console him and wouldn’t dare try. It’s not her place and it’s sad that the one who should be comforting him in a moment of sadness is the cause of it.

Sally forces herself to look down at the body at her feet, skin that’s come into contact slowly turning red as the acid works. In a few weeks there will nothing left of her.

When she looks back up at the man she finds herself not looking at the man but looking at the baby he holds. The young thing has turned her head to stare right at her with wide, seeing eyes and babies shouldn’t be opening their eyes so soon, shouldn’t be staring at her like this.

Babies shouldn’t be able to look at her and see straight to her soul.

This girl is not even a few days old and she’s already pinning Sally under a stare that sees right down inside her, right to her core where the brunette hides all her secrets. _“For our Annabeth, who will be the smartest godling to ever exist.”_ A voice tells her, one that is now extinguished forever except in memory and it's a memory that bubbles up to haunt Sally just as that stare is doing. _“A daughter of Athena primarily.”_

Sally doesn’t know the baby, or her mother, and she wishes that the woman would’ve lived because Sally is sure that Annabeth knows exactly what’s going on right now. She may be days old but the blonde haired babe knows that corpse is her mother and that her mother is dead and never coming back. Sally can see it in her stare, the intelligence hidden behind those eyes and the sadness and it’s tragic. This child will never have the chance to not know grief and it can devastate a person.

_“Everyone is telling me how smart she will be, oh she will be brilliant!”_

All of the godlings will be brilliant, Sally knows this because her own son puts her under a scrutinizing stare every once in a while like he is trying to understand who she is and why she’s there. Percy is intelligent, more so than the average human, but Annabeth is smarter than any human had ever been and ever will be.

Baby Annabeth stares at for a second longer before she tears her gaze away to look at her mother, staring at her lifeless form a few seconds before looking back at Sally and Sally can see it when the baby reads the I’m sorry in Sally’s eyes because her expression puckers up and tears form in her eyes and she lets out a mourning wail unlike anything she’s ever heard a child this young make.

Sally has to excuse herself shortly thereafter because that cry pierces her heart and she can’t stand hearing it anymore.

 

* * *

  


Percy Jackson is three when his mother first tells him what he is. He knows he’s different from everyone else just as he knows how to breathe underwater and just how he knows to breathe period. It’s ingrained in his brain and whenever he stares at his mother something inside him registers that she is not like him and at first he doesn’t understand. His mother is his mother and it shouldn’t matter that she’s different to him. He loves her with everything she has and she is everything to him and sometimes he wants to do mean things to nasty Smelly Gabe who treats her like scum and makes her do things for him just because he’s too lazy to do them himself.

He looks like her, well he doesn’t have her physical features but he had ten toes and ten fingers like her, he has a nose and a pair of eyes and even a tongue that when he sticks out at her she laughs at every time. Sure the color of his eyes aren’t normal, _the color of the sea that is the most beautiful,_ his mother tells him, and maybe they glow but his mother tells him normal.

And he tries his hardest to ignore the voice in the back of his head, the part of himself that sees the world with cold detachment and tells him that he’s better than this, says _she is nothing to you, she is below you because you are the sea, the biting cold, the quake of the Earth and they all belong at your feet where humans should be._ Percy is human though, he firmly believes that just because he can do things that others can’t doesn’t mean that they are less than he is. Well, Smell Gabe is because he’s horrible and some days Percy wishes to give into the urge to put his head underwater and never let him surface again because this world would be better without him.

He would never _ever_ do that to his mother though. She doesn’t deserve the meanness that lives in him and wishes to do harm to anyone that doesn’t treat with with respect. There is something wrong with him and he knows this with a certainty that is solid. He tells his mother exactly this and knows. He knows that when he she tells him that he is just as normal anyone else that she is lying.

He tells her this too and wishes he hadn’t.

It causes an emotion to flit across her face for the barest second, so fleeting that someone _normal_ would’ve never caught it because Percy does and makes him feel sorry for ever even opening his mouth about the whole thing.

He wishes he could take back the last few minutes of his life when his mother tells him that no, he isn’t normal.

“You’re a god, a powerful being who controls the seas and the Earth and the cold and other things we haven’t found out about yet. You are so important and you don’t know it yet, and I love you even if you aren’t human. You are better as a god than a human, humans destroy lives and worlds without care but you can fix it and make it right because you’re not human. A human makes mistakes and a god can heal every one of them.”

His mother sounds so adamant and he can see that she truly believes this, that he is special and there is something he needs to heal. He’s good at healing too, he’s healed his mother’s bruises and cuts with water from the tap and he makes her all better with his ability. His mother’s words are full of truth because she believes them wholeheartedly and that speaks to Percy more than anything else. His mother believes he can do good and help people instead of destroy them like he feels the urge to and he wants to live up to her belief.

A hug is shared between then and Percy hangs onto his mother so tight with tiny hands and childish innocence and he thinks _I can make the world right and mom won’t have to deal with Smelly Gabe anymore. I’ll heal the world for her._

The other part of him doesn’t have anything to say on this, quiet for once like it hasn’t been in a long time. It doesn’t say a world because his resolve is unshakeable. If they live underground because the surface is too dangerous to live on then he’ll fix it, he’ll make it so it can be lived on again no matter what he has to do. He loves his mother and he would do anything for her and this he will do if it will make her smile, if it will make her happy.

 

* * *

 

 

“Do you ever wonder where we come from?” Annabeth asks him one day. She looks at him with eyes the color of molten silver, swirling with knowledge and questions and things Percy doesn’t even know. Percy has been told he’s smart but he has nothing on Annabeth who is pretty to match her smarts. She wonders about things he doesn’t want to think about because it would take up too much time and too much energy but that’s Annabeth.

“Huh? What kind of question is that? Our mothers gave birth to us.” It’s simple, he came out of his mother and he doesn’t want to think about it any farther than that. He doesn’t need to know all the details about how all babies are born, no thank you.

Annabeth frowns at him in a _Percy you idiot I know that way_ and she shakes her head like he is the slowest creature she has ever met and he feels a little insulted but at the same time he doesn’t Annabeth is smart so she should know if he isn’t no matter what humans say and he trusts her judgement. Even on something as stupid on whether he’s smart. He’s not a child of Athena anyway, he doesn’t need to be smart.

When she stares at him with that seeing-your-everything gaze and doesn’t say anything he figures he should try to elaborate what he meant, “I mean I know we’re not like everyone else. Thalia can keep the generators running for days when they go down, her little brother can do pretty much the same thing, and Luke is so fast that no one even sees him when he doesn’t want them too. Even Bianca and Nico can do weird stuff.” Weird stuff as in talk to the dead and summon skeletons and split the floor of the compound open to do so. “I don’t get your point. What do you get from wondering where we come from? It doesn’t matter.”

She crosses her arm and her frown deepens to a _why am I holding this conversation with you_ type of frown. She lets out an explosive sigh and leans back in her chair. “Of course you wouldn’t wonder because you take everything at face value. People lie, Percy. They tell us we’re suppose to fix their mistakes but _where did we come from?_ There is no one else older than Thalia like us and we’re different from humans. We’re not human. So how did humans create us?”

The rest of Annabeth sentence is in one ear and out the other as _“People lie, Percy”_ sticks to his brain in ways that grates on his nerves. It makes him angry that Annabeth would accuse his mother of lying. His mother was the most honest person he knew and she would never lie to him, she had not a thing to gain from it if nothing else.

His eyes told cold like a winter day and he misses Annabeth’s slight shiver when those eyes find her. The glass on the table in front of him shakes as the water inside it vibrates, reacting to his anger. “My mom would never lie to me!”

Annabeth’s face immediately shifts to something calm, a neutral emotion that’s unlikely to make Percy burst pipes like when Thalia and Luke tried to explain to him that his mother is nothing to him because they’re gods. The whole compound had been upset because burst pipes meant valuable water was being wasted and so was the time it took to fix them. There was unspoken agreement never to talk ill of Sally while Percy could hear.

The blonde puts her hands up in surrender, voice soft as she speaks. “I know Percy, I didn’t mean it that way.” She’s sincere about it because she genuinely likes Sally and Percy knows that so his anger is soothed away by the closest thing he’ll probably ever get as an apology from her. Annabeth is prideful just like Percy is loyal.

Sea foam green eyes return to being bright and curious, not like Annabeth’s curious because Percy is curious for adventure, and the blonde thinks that when Percy reaches the surface one day he’ll be the one to have the most fun with his freedom. He’d probably take forever with his assignment because he was fooling around and exploring instead of doing his job.

Percy doesn’t know this however, and turns his attention from Annabeth as a familiar pair of dark heads enter his line of sight. Nico and Bianca come in just in time to join them for food as dinner is brought out to them. Percy immediately smiles when he sees Nico, all energy and enthusiasm and he expects the hug. The boy is barely three, just as many years younger than Percy, but Percy likes his constant optimism. His the-world-will-get-better-because-I-hope-it-will attitude. Though Nico could be annoying with all his questions and Percy occasionally wondered if Nico was secretly a child of Athena since he was always wanting to know things. Always asking questions. Kinda like Annabeth.

Nico takes the seat next to him and Bianca sits on the other side of her brother and makes a face at the food that finds itself in front of her. Percy always laughs because she’s always hated the green, slimy, gross stuff they eat everyday for every dinner. Algae, he remembers it being called. It fed everything from them to the generators and how it does that all at once is unknown to Percy. He doesn’t really care to be honest, he just wishes he had something better to eat but the rations had been used last year and now the algae was their only lifeline until the children of Demeter could perfect their powers in growing food for the compound.

It’s funny that Bianca doesn’t like it, because Nico doesn’t seem to mind.

“How was your day Percy? Do you find out anything new? Oh! Did you hear from the doctor that in a few years some of us could start going outside? Did--” But Percy cuts him off because Nico is cute until he opens his mouth and spills words everywhere.

“Can you ask me sometimes later? I’m kinda tired.” Which is a completely lie and they both know it because Percy hasn’t done anything straining today other than listen to Annabeth ponder the meaning of life. When Nico deflates Percy feels kinda guilty and kind of relieves; Nico gave in this time instead of trying to wear down Percy’s resolve to not answer his questions. The boy could tire anyone out if he tried.

“Oh,” Is all Nico says.

Bianca looks up from her meal and gives Percy a blatant look of disdain. She doesn’t care for Percy because of her brother. Because Nico likes him so much, practically hero worships him, and Percy doesn’t really want to deal with him most of the time. She doesn’t like it when he embarasses Nico like that and shuts him down and Percy thinks she has the creepiest stare out of anyone he knows. Her stare is death and desire all wrapped up into one. Probably the desire to see him death more than likely. He’s been put under the terrible, spine chilling stare before when he made Nico cry. Percy had been having a bad day and Nico has been up to his usual, all questions and no patience, and Percy had punched him and Bianca had been furious at him for days. He'd been legitimately scared of her. No one made her brother cry just like no one talked bad about Percy’s mother.

The green-eyed boy puts his head down as he digs into his dinner. Nico is almost mirroring him and he feels guilty because Nico doesn’t really have any friends other than his sister. His sister is his whole world just like Percy’s mother is to him and Percy knows what it would feel like to Nico if he ever lost his sister. Percy would feel the same way if he ever lost his mother.

Percy doesn’t see Nico the next day and that’s probably because of Bianca, who doesn’t give her brother the chance to get his hopes smashed by Percy.

 

* * *

 

 

When Percy is twelve and Nico is almost ten and they’re suppose to be training their powers together but they skip their lesson. Originally it was Percy’s idea because Nico was usually well behaved, hardly ever stepping a toe out of line, and listening to everything he’s told. Percy on the other hand has gotten too adventurous the past few years, more than anyone is comfortable with after he tries to pop the lock on one of the doors to the outside, and Nico is his constant partner in crime. Sometimes not reluctantly because with Nico it’s always “Percy we shouldn’t be doing this.” and “Percy are you sure this is safe?” and if Percy was more worried about Nico telling his sister everything then he wouldn’t bring Nico along. He listens to Percy when the older boy tells him to keep quiet though.

The two of them sneak down a hallway, having picked the lab as their target for exploration that day and ignoring all the warning signs of “staff and cleared personnel only” plastered everywhere to travel further. Annabeth always wanted to know where they came from. She was always asking him how they came to be and Percy didn’t know but Annabeth was very pretty and he wanted to impress her so he was going to find out for her.

(He would never admit that he was jealous of all the attention Luke was getting from her. Luke was older and more mature than Percy and he wanted Annabeth’s attention back.)

Behind him Percy can almost sense Nico opening his mouth to say something and he looks over his shoulder and gives Nico a pointed look, say, “Shut up and keep quiet.”

Once upon a time Percy would’ve feared telling Nico to shut up because if he told Bianca then she would skewer him alive. That was before Percy found out that if he wanted something from Nico that the boy would do whatever it took to give it to him. It was like he could tell the boy to do anything and he would do it. Even something as gross as kissing Percy. (Not that Percy wouldn’t kiss Nico, he was cute and could pull off a pouty look that rivaled Percy’s and his lips looked soft. Percy liked Annabeth though. He wanted to kiss Annabeth and not Nico.)

Percy never took it too far though despite that long-been-quiet part of him would think it would be thrilling to do it. However, just like Percy had changed over the last few years so had Nico. He was still the enthusiastic kid that Percy had always known but when he’d started his official training last year, disappearing for a few months from even his sister. Everyone of them had been worked up except for any of the humans. They assured them that he was alright, but Bianca was so anxious that she threw a fit when Nico turned up again and… wasn’t the same. After getting into touch with his powers over life and death he’d adopted this quiet creepiness that sometimes affected even his sister. He could sneak up on anyone and scare the hell out of them and not even flinch when someone screamed at the top of their lungs on some occasions.  Percy didn’t really know what it was about but Nico was strange now. An unbalanced mixture of God of Death and optimism that was starting not to fit together all that well.

It was like Nico was trying to cling to how he was as he was growing into who he should be. (And man did Percy feel it. Felt it like could feel the oceans hundreds of miles away and the water in the pipes and the heartbeat against his rib cage. Nico was going to be powerful when he was older and Percy would go as far as to say he would even rule the world one day if he put his mind to it.)

Nico purses his lips and fixes Percy with quick eye contact that makes Percy shiver because he had Bianca’s “death stare” in his eyes even when he wasn’t trying. It was creepy and oddly fitting at the same time.

Percy looks away and trusts that Nico will stay quiet as they inch closer and closer. He takes a sharp right, the younger boy trailing behind him when they meet a pair of hushed voices drifting down the hallway. Percy can’t make out what they’re saying and he creeps up the corner, a three-way section of hallway and thankfully isn’t later in the evening because there’s no one in the halls except for Nico and Percy and the other two people apparently.

He puts a frustrated look on his face when he can’t pick up anything still and he is so surprised when Nico bolts right past him and silently moves behind the other corner across from Percy that he almost gives himself away. He wasn’t expecting this kind of forwardness from Nico in doing something he shouldn’t and this was different. Way different than before and Percy isn’t sure if he likes this new attitude Nico has. Nico’s never been a leader until now. He had never been a loner either but now the only people he regularly interacted with were Bianca and Percy and maybe Jason. Percy didn’t really care for Jason, they butted heads too much, but Nico liked him. Jason seemed to like him well enough too.

He puts his frustration into a huff just as Nico makes a “come hither” gesture with two fingers and Percy thinks about ignoring him but his curiosity wins about. Nico can hear what they’re saying from over there. Percy takes a quick look before sneaking across the hall to the other side of Nico. The voices come into hearing range.

“...Only ones in existence but this group has been able to create the most powerful bunch we’ve ever seen and you know this.” Voice One is a women as far as Percy can tell, and the second voice, a man, chimes in after a thoughtful noise.

“Do you have any idea how hard getting one, not to mention all, of them and ourselves out of here will be? The mortals have this compound locked down tighter than Chiron’s wards. You and I both thought that getting in here would’ve been easier than it actually was but these mortals are hiding gods among them and what they’re doing to them isn’t right.”

Percy can’t see anything but from the look on Nico’s face he can. The older boy wished Nico couldn’t see them interacting from around the corner though because a frightening expression came upon him. A look of sheer rapture crossed with anger, a foreign emotion that Nico didn’t wear well. (In truth he wore it too well.) These two humans were talking about them, the godlings, and Percy wished he could see them so badly.

Voice Two continues with, “You work with the trainers, you see what they do to the ones whose powers don’t cooperate with them. One of them was… well, you know,” Something flashes in Nico’s eyes and Percy would give his arm to know what Nico was thinking, “until they tapped into their powers and killed two humans.”

“Yeah and if we talked to them they would--” But whatever Voice One was saying is cut off because something bangs open on the other end of the hallway, on the opposite end of Nico and Percy. Nico grabs the front of Percy’s shirt and Percy nearly jumps out of his skin, and the dark haired boy pulls him along until he walks willingly away from the situation. Percy wants to know at least know what they’d been talking about. They’d came all this way to sneak into labs and he left without anything to impress Annabeth… unless--

As if summoned by Percy’s thoughts, Nico stops and turns on his heels so quickly that Percy nearly runs into him. The smaller boy fixed him with the death stare, looking so much like Bianca that if Percy didn’t know otherwise he would eat his shoe if someone said that Bianca and Nico weren’t twins. The expression softens after a few minutes and Bianca’s gone, morphed back into Nico because this is the Nico he knows. “Don’t tell a single soul what you just heard.”

Well, not exactly the Nico he knows because Nico doesn’t demand things from him, except now he does apparently. “No one, Percy. I’m serious.”

Percy puts his hands up, “Okay, okay. I won’t tell.” He has every intention of telling though. He wants Annabeth’s affection and if this will get it then he’ll use it.

That stare comes back and Percy almost balks under it, “Promise me.”  
  
“What, no--”

“ _Promise_ me.” Nico crosses his arms over his chest and puts on a face that says he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Part of him is irritated because how dare Nico demand him to do anything, he was a god and Nico was weaker than him and-- but Percy stifles that voice because this Nico is uncharted territory and he doesn’t know how provoking him would work for him. The other boy is doing his damndest to tie Percy into something he can’t get out of because Percy doesn’t break his promises. His mother taught him that promises weren’t suppose to be made lightly because they weren’t suppose to be broken.

“Percy!” Nico shouts it and Percy almost shushes him because what if someone catches them? Nico looks like he’s two seconds from being upset though so Percy give in, “Okay, I promise I won’t tell anyone.” Nico looks satisfied and turns and walks away and Percy lets him go because he’s almost positive that what he saw in Nico’s eyes earlier wasn’t an emotion. Whatever those two people had been talking about had effected Nico so badly that it had gotten under his skin.

With nothing left to do he returns to his own room for the night, right next to his mother’s.

He falls asleep later that night after a quiet dinner filled with awkwardness because Nico wasn’t talking to Percy and Bianca was suspicious and the blond boy with glasses (Jason?) who was sitting on Nico’s other side kept staring at Percy whenever Nico would glance up, notice Percy, and look away. The Son of the Sea didn’t know what to make of Jason. He’d never really talked to Jason and his stoicism was bothering Percy but Nico’s quietness was bothering Percy more. Actually, scratch that, this protective thing Jason was doing over Nico being quiet was what bothered Percy most. What was that about?

He met Jason’s eyes and held his gaze. Percy wasn’t sure if he was trying to initiate a challenge and if he was what over or if he was trying to judge the other. When had Nico and Jason gotten so close?

It hounds him the entire night and eventually his eyelids slide closed and drifts off to sleep.

He doesn’t have the chance to sleep till morning.

Percy is jerked out of a dead sleep hours later when he hears the alarms blaring. They’re are so loud that the first whooo is what wakes Percy, the blood chilling in his veins and making him sweat because it scares him half to death. He throws himself out of bed, grabbing his sword, the first one he’d ever received when they’d started training him to go outside and deal with all the monsters he would find, and pushes the door open so hard it bangs against the wall.

The warm air of the hallway contrasts with his skin and it’s so shocking that Percy almost stops dead in his tracks. The hallway should not be warm. Outside was warm, but the compound was cool because they were underground. _It should not be warm._

It strikes like a blow to the chest why the alarms are blaring and the scared coldness in his veins in back. The alarm was only used if the compound had been compromised, if the doors had been opened to the outside unauthorized.

If they were under attack.

Percy panics and takes off down the hallway at full speed towards where other people are running too and running away from both. He sees his mother as he moves and thinks he shouts for her to find safety but adrenaline is roaring in his ears and he doesn’t hear his own words. He’d never actually fought anything, any monster before. He’s only fought his tutors and trainers and they called him brilliant, said he would be an excellent swordsman when he matures, but he’s never put it to the test. The trainers were designed to be predictable for a reason. He’s not ready but he has to be because if this thing finds him or he finds it, and if he can’t kill kill it and it kills him, a lot of people are going to die. Humans can’t defend themselves against monsters. The others like him might, but most of them hadn’t even started training yet. They didn’t know how to handle a sword much less how to dodge when being swung at.

Fear drives him to hunt out the monster, following the sound of screaming and screeching and horror across the building. The closer he gets the more he notices the blood on the walls and wills himself not to look down at the bodies he’s stepping over.

How had the monster even gotten in? They had the best defenses here, the walls were cement and steel layered on top of each other feet thick everywhere, the doorways to the outside were triple sealed with tempered steel doors that were reinforced with kevlar and it took two passcodes from two different locations at the same time to even get outside. Even the “skylight” that filtered in sunlight to feed the algae in the greenhouse was lined with layer after layer of bullet proof glass all the way down. They were a hundred feet underground.

_How_ did something get in? It was impossible. But it wasn’t.

The more twists and turns he takes the closer he is to this monster and the closer he is to the side of the building that Nico and Bianca are living in. Where Luke is living. Where Annabeth is.

_Annabeth._

His thoughts are screaming at him to hurry up or everyone is going to die and he hears the most frightening thing he’s ever heard. He hears a grotesque crunching sound and then a high pitched, blood curdling scream follows. He knows that voice even when it’s making a noise it shouldn’t, that’s Annabeth screaming.   
  
_That’s Annabeth’s terrified screaming,_ his mind repeats over and over again until he slides around the corner and swings his sword as hard as he can. The blade finds purchase on a metal wing and leaves a deep slash across the top, severing what has to be the tendon. But he’s not a metallic bird expert and he isn’t even thinking at all and his body switches from one position to the next, slashing and stabbing and dodging as he cuts the bird a few times.

The bird backs up, like it’s trying to gauge how to best take care of him and he backs up as well to give himself some room because the hallway is too tiny and it’s between Percy and the exit.

(He doesn’t miss that the doors are wide open like someone had disengaged the locks and left without closing the door.)

He almost trips as he’s moving back because his left foot slips on something slick and his right heel hits something solid. He unwisely spares a glance down and feels his stomach contents climbing up his throat. He doesn’t recognize the body but that’s because it’s missing it’s head and lower half. Big chunks are missing from the body as blood spills out of gaping wounds created by what looked like a beak. They had been torn to pieces and eaten.

Percy has to advert his eyes because he’s going to be sick. The smell alone enough is to bring the image seared into memory back to the forefront of his mind. There is blood and innards and body parts everywhere and the hallway looks like a blood bath.

The Son of the Sea can’t stop himself from thinking about how he’s too young to deal with this. He may be a god but he’s not capable of dealing with this, this type of carnage and the horror and he feels like he wants to pass out but he can’t. If he does Annabeth will die and oh how he can see the terrified look as he curls herself up in the corner by the door, trying to hide from the bird.

He brings his sword back up, insides twisting and heart pounding in his chest hard that he’s afraid it’ll break open his ribs and burst right out of his skin. The bird leers at him, blood splattered across it’s metal feathers and all over it’s beak and there’s a bit of flesh stuck in the hinges of it’s jaw.

Percy turns to the side and loses his dinner to his nausea and the floor. He thinks he hears Annabeth retching too.   
  
The screech the bird lets out it so horrible that he just wants to stab it in the throat to shut it up but it’s body decides that it’s time to lock itself up from fear and the scene unfolding in front of him.

The metal bird gives him one last look before turning around and setting it's sight on Annabeth and Percy’s brain is in overdrive but his body is frozen on the spot. It happens in slow motion to him, as it charges her with a confident stride that he didn’t even know a bird could have. He sees her horrified face lose all it’s color and she ducks her head down as she covers it with her arms and pulls her knees up to her chest. He’s never seen her so scared before.

It doesn’t reach her though. A bolt of lightning that flies down the hallway, though missing the bird, stops it and makes it jump back away from her. Thalia and Luke turn a corner into his vision and where had they come from? Thalia shouts something at Annabeth and then Luke says something but Percy can’t hear because it sounds like there’s static in his ears, the sheer situation leaving him dazed and in shock.

Luke turns, an angry snarl twisting his lips and nose and eyes and he yells something the bird and Percy can’t make out what it is. Whatever he said seems to anger it and it charges at him as he runs towards the exit and leaves the compound. He watches in disbelief as Thalia doesn’t even pause as she grabs Annabeth’s arm and pulls her along behind as she follows the path the bird and Luke took, slamming her fist into the emergency lock button as they pass it and slip out of the building. Annabeth turns and his eyes meet hers, stunned and oh so beautiful, but nothing about this is beautiful. There’s blood all over the front her and her face is ashen with shock and her hair was falling out of her bun.

She was wearing dark clothes with layers and there was a bag slung over her shoulder and she was _dressed_ to go outside. All three of them were. It hits Percy as he watches the doors slide closed between.

She had been the one to unlock the doors, she and Luke and Thalia had been prepared to leave the compound and they had risked everyone’s lives to do so.   
  
The door clicks closed and a loud whirring sound signals the engaging of the locks as they slide into place and seal the building back up and they were gone. His senses clear as the immediate danger is gone and he falls to his knees, unable to do anything but stare at the shut doors.

That’s the way Nico finds him what feels like an eternity later. That buzzing in his ears is back and he isn’t sure what it is but something isn’t right. It feels like his mind is expanding to try to reach the ocean and collapsing back in on itself at the same time and Nico is saying something to him, having his hand in front of Percy’s and Percy notices everything all at once. He notices the gash across Nico’s shoulder and the dark bruise forming on his face and it had to be on his face crosses his mind like that’s the appropriate thing to be thinking at the moment. He also thinks, there was more than one, there had to be because Nico just looks like he came from a fight and his fingers are trembling and there’s a frightened look to his his eyes what was going on?

Nico tries to pull him to his feet and Percy is only standing for a few seconds before the ground comes rushing up to meet him as he loses consciousness.

**Author's Note:**

> I was happy with this, and now I'm not. :/ Let me know what you think though! 
> 
> Things to mention:  
> 1) Percy and co actually won't be that overpowered in retrospect, if you feared that. They'll have their own problems being 90%+ gods since it's unnatural and they're not suppose to exist. 50/50 blood like demigods have is safe, but such an unbalance of genes is not. 
> 
> I need a beta for this, obviously, since I'm sure there are typos galore and I'm so sorry for that.


End file.
